TRENCHER/ESQUILAX Peel session split 10"

It’s a disgusting world out there. Some pretty messed up shit goes on daily and this might just be the soundtrack to the whole goddamn mess.

After a few years of low-sound-quality releases, London 3 piece Trencher use a side of vinyl and a session recorded for John Peel to further prove how much damage can be done with a sore throat, a perverted sense of fun and a tiny keyboard. They drag Birmingham noisy bastards Esquilax along to make their debut on the other side.

Although recorded live, Trencher sound better than they ever have before. Fast and loud, ambitious but awkward, frantic stop-start-stops and frightening noise spasms that make Converge look formulaic, their ugly grinding everything-core genuinely pushes for the boundaries of extremity and even the borders of listenability.

They describe their live shows as “violent, therapeutic catharsis”, a feeling translated into the high-speed drums, droning, relentless bass and ringing Casio squawk of tracks like ‘Blondes Of Meth’ and ‘Attack Of The SXE Attackers’ here. And whoever the hell is screaming must be getting some huge personal demons out. Or a killer headache.

Esquilax sound like that headache, or like an alien being pulled backwards through a tiny hole in a spaceship window by the vacuum beyond. Branded ‘terror pop’, they fire through 15 tracks of their piercing digital hardcore in just over nine minutes.

Like disco music played backwards too fast and mixed with the theme from some obscure 80’s cartoon, there are bubbling circus effects, a shattering drum-machine stomp and desperate, clawing vocals. Bouts of apparent randomness, some near-silent lows followed by shrill, scathing highs…this is probably what murderers hear when they close their eyes.

This is definitely all challenging stuff, but not a challenge like staying awake at a prog-rock concert; a challenge like escaping from a Terminator. Trying to kill you with a power drill.

Much closer to the dictionary definition of noise than that of music; for some, this will be genius at work, the captured sound of two twisted bands on fine form. For everybody else it could be enough to make them never listen to music again, in case something like this ever slips through the speakers for a second time.

Also appears at new-noise